Adobe 2004 Annual Report Download - page 9

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9
We believe that Adobe can address these issues and realize significant opportunities. Our Adobe Intelligent
Documents business provides organizations with solutions that create a secure and flexible way to extend the power
and reach of their enterprise applications both inside and outside their computer network firewall. Our solutions can
create intelligent documents which can be viewed, interacted with, and integrated into existing business processes.
Our strategy to address these opportunities consists of delivering an Intelligent Document Platform that contains
three architectural components:
• Intelligent Adobe PDF documents
• a universal client, the Adobe Reader
• a set of document services
Intelligent documents in Adobe PDF interact with core business applications and integrate information
contained in those documents into business processes. Because they are exact electronic replicas, intelligent
documents retain the best characteristics of paper documents, such as a familiar look. To this, we provide powerful
business logic capabilities such as data validation and automated routing instructions. In addition, arbitrary data
(including XML-based data) can be embedded inside of intelligent PDF documents for use or access later on in a
business process. These features allow for more efficient interaction with enterprise applications while still
providing the ability for people to manually access and interact with the data when necessary.
A universal client is a commonly available interface or access point between people and intelligent documents.
Adobe Reader software and Web browsers are examples of universal clients. With more than 500 million distributed
copies of Adobe Reader, we have created a ubiquitous platform for accessing and interacting with intelligent
documents. Adobe Reader is available on the most common operating system platforms free of charge, including
Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, Linux, various Unix-based platforms, and portable device systems such as
Palm OS, Pocket PC, and the Symbian operating system for cellular phones. As a universal client, Adobe Reader
enables users inside and outside the firewall to interact with intelligent PDF documents on most platforms, including
desktops, laptops, PDAs, mobile phones, and kiosks, regardless of the application used to author the document.
Finally, document services are underlying technologies that create, integrate, and manage intelligent documents
– leveraging the use of a universal client for constituents to interact with data within the document. Document
services that we provide include:
• Document generation — enables users to generate high-quality documents in real time and via batch
processes. This can be done from desktop applications or dynamically from core systems. These products
and solutions dynamically generate personalized, customer-facing documents from enterprise applications
for enhanced customer communications.
• Document process management — products and solutions which allow organizations to automate form-
based workflows deploying intelligent data capture systems and rules-based process management to
automate business transactions.
• Document collaboration — products and solutions to streamline collaborative processes securely among
users, with a goal to accelerate review cycles and reduce costs.
• Document control and security — products and solutions to control document access and usage, enable the
use of digital signatures as a replacement for paper and pen-based signatures, and certify document
authenticity.
We provide both desktop and server-based software to address the needs of these market opportunities. On the
desktop, we offer the Adobe Acrobat product family. On servers, we offer Adobe LiveCycle server software, which
was launched in the second quarter of fiscal 2004 as a new umbrella brand name for our many server products that,
when combined, deliver solutions for these document service categories. Adobe LiveCycle software is built on
common server architecture based on Java 2 Enterprise Edition (“J2EE”) and XML, allowing for easy integration
into enterprise infrastructures.